Some conventional voltage converter systems include multiple buck converters arranged in parallel to provide current to a load. In general, as the load draws more current the voltage converter may activate more buck converters, and as the load draws less current the voltage converter may activate fewer buck converters. In some examples, the parallel buck converter circuits may be referred to as phases and the voltage converter referred to as a multi-phase buck converter.
Energy efficiency of such systems may be defined, for example, as input current divided by output current, where a value of one would be 100% efficiency. Various conventional voltage converters show different efficiencies at different load currents. Furthermore, while some conventional systems may activate more of the buck converters to handle more current, simply activating more buck converters for a given amount of power consumption may not increase efficiency and, in fact, may decrease efficiency in some scenarios. Accordingly, there is a need to increase efficiency of a multi-phase buck converter over a wide range of load values.